Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2001 15:52:14
From: Mitchel Cohen <mitchelcohen-AT-mindspring.com>
Subject: FAIR: Media March to War


FAIR  Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting

MEDIA ADVISORY: 
Media March to War 

September 17, 2001 

In the wake of the devastating attacks on the World Trade Center and the 
Pentagon, many media pundits focused on one theme: retaliation. For 
some, it did not matter who bears the brunt of an American attack: 


"There is only one way to begin to deal with people like this, and that 
is you have to kill some of them even if they are not immediately 
directly involved in this thing." 
--former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger (CNN, 9/11/01) 



"The response to this unimaginable 21st-century Pearl Harbor should be 
as simple as it is swift-- kill the bastards. A gunshot between the 
eyes, blow them to smithereens, poison them if you have to.  As for 
cities or countries that host these worms, bomb them into basketball 
courts." 
--Steve Dunleavy (New York Post, 9/12/01) 



"America roused to a righteous anger has always been a force for good. 
States that have been supporting if not Osama bin Laden, people like him 
need to feel pain. If we flatten part of Damascus or Tehran or whatever 
it takes, that is part of the solution." 
--Rich Lowry, National Review editor, to Howard Kurtz (Washington Post, 
9/13/01) 



"TIME TO TAKE NAMES AND NUKE AFGHANISTAN." 
--Caption to cartoon by Gary Brookins (Richmond Times -Dispatch, 
9/13/01) 



"At a bare minimum, tactical nuclear capabilites should be used against 
the bin Laden camps in the desert of Afghanistan. To do less would be 
rightly seen by the poisoned minds that orchestrated these attacks as 
cowardice on the part of the United States and the current 
administration." 
--Former Defense Intelligence Agency officer Thomas Woodrow, "Time to 
Use the Nuclear Option" (Washington Times, 9/14/01) 



Bill O'Reilly: "If the Taliban government of Afghanistan does not 
cooperate, then we will damage that government with air power, probably. 
All right? We will blast them, because..." 

Sam Husseini, Institute for Public Accuracy: "Who will you kill in the 
process?" 

O'Reilly: "Doesn't make any difference." 
--("The O'Reilly Factor," Fox News Channel, 9/13/01) 



"This is no time to be precious about locating the exact individuals 
directly involved in this particular terrorist attack.... We should 
invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to 
Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only 
Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed 
civilians. That's war. And this is war." 
--Syndicated columnist Ann Coulter (New York Daily News, 9/12/01) 




"Real" Retribution 

Many media commentators appeared to blame the attacks on what they saw 
as America's unwillingness to act aggressively in recent years. 

As conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer (Washington Post, 9/12/01) 
wrote: "One of the reasons there are enough terrorists out there capable 
and deadly enough to carry out the deadliest attack on the United States 
in its history is that, while they have declared war on us, we have in 
the past responded (with the exception of a few useless cruise missile 
attacks on empty tents in the desert) by issuing subpoenas." 

The Washington Post's David Broder (9/13/01), considered a moderate, 
issued his own call for "new realism -- and steel -- in America's 
national security policy": "For far too long, we have been queasy about 
responding to terrorism. Two decades ago, when those with real or 
imagined grievances against the United States began picking off 
Americans overseas on military or diplomatic assignments or on business, 
singly or in groups, we delivered pinprick retaliations or none at all." 


It's worth recalling the U.S. response to the bombing of a Berlin disco 
in April 1986, which resulted in the deaths of two U.S. service members: 
The U.S. immediately bombed Libya, which it blamed for the attack. 
According to Libya, 36 civilians were killed in the air assault, 
including the year-old daughter of Libyan leader Moamar Khadafy (
Washington Post, 5/9/86). It is unlikely that Libyans considered this a 
"pinprick." Yet these deaths apparently had little deterrence value: In 
December 1988, less than 20 months later, Pan Am 103 exploded over 
Lockerbie, Scotland, in an even deadlier act of terrorism the U.S. 
blames on Libyan agents. 

More recently, in 1998, Bill Clinton sent 60 cruise missiles, some 
equipped with cluster bombs, against bin Laden's Afghan base, in what 
was presented as retaliation for the bombing of U.S. embassies in 
Africa. One missile aimed at Afghan training camps landed hundreds of 
miles off course in Pakistan, while a simultaneous attack in Sudan 
leveled one of the country's few pharmaceutical factories. Media cheered 
the attacks (In These Times, 9/6/98), though careful investigation into 
the case revealed no credible evidence linking the plant to chemical 
weapons or Osama bin Laden, the two justifications offered for the 
attack (New York Times, 10/27/99, London Observer, 8/23/98). 

Despite the dubious record of retributory violence in insuring security, 
many pundits insist that previous retaliation failed only because it was 
not severe enough. As the Chicago Tribune's John Kass declared 
(9/13/01), "For the past decade we've sat dumb and stupid as the U.S. 
military was transformed from a killing machine into a playpen for 
sociologists and political schemers." This "playpen" dropped 23,000 
bombs on Yugoslavia in 1999, killing between 500 and 1,500 civilians, 
and may have killed as many as 1,200 Iraqis in 1998's Desert Fox attack 
(Agence France Presse, 12/23/98). 

The Wall Street Journal (9/13/01) urged the U.S. to "get serious" about 
terrorism by, among other things, eliminating "the 1995 rule, imposed by 
former CIA Director John Deutsch under political pressure, limiting whom 
the U.S. can recruit for counter-terrorism. For fear of hiring rogues, 
the CIA decided it would only hire Boy Scouts." One non-Boy Scout the 
CIA worked with in the 1980s is none other than Osama bin Laden (MSNBC, 
8/24/98; The Atlantic, 7-8/01)-- then considered a valuable asset in the 
fight against Communism, but now suspected of being the chief instigator 
of the World Trade Center attacks. 



Who's to Blame? 

In crisis situations, particularly those involving terrorism, media 
often report unsubstantiated information about suspects or those 
claiming responsibility-- an error that is especially dangerous in the 
midst of calls for military retaliation. 

Early reports on the morning of the attack indicated that the Democratic 
Front for the Liberation of Palestine had claimed responsibility on Abu 
Dhabi Television. Most outlets were careful with the information, though 
NBC's Tom Brokaw, while not confirming the story, added fuel to the 
fire: "This comes, ironically, on a day when the Israel Foreign Minister 
Shimon Peres is scheduled to meet with Yasser Arafat. Of course, we've 
had the meeting in South Africa for the past several days in which the 
Palestinians were accusing the Israelis of racism"--as if making such an 
accusation were tantamount to blowing up the World Trade Center. 

Hours after a spokesperson for the Democratic Front for the Liberation 
of Palestine denied any responsibility for the attack, the Drudge Report
 website still had the headline "Palestinian Group Says Responsible" at 
the top of the page. 

Though the threat from a Palestinian group proved unsubstantiated, that 
did not stop media from making gross generalizations about Arabs and 
Islam in general. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wondered 
(9/13/01): "Surely Islam, a grand religion that never perpetrated the 
sort of Holocaust against the Jews in its midst that Europe did, is 
being distorted when it is treated as a guidebook for suicide bombing. 
How is it that not a single Muslim leader will say that?" 

Of course, many Muslims would -- and did -- say just that. Political and 
civil leaders throughout the Muslim world have condemned the attacks, 
and Muslim clerics throughout the Middle East have given sermons 
refuting the idea that targeting civilians is a tenet of Islam (BBC
 9/14/01, Washington Post 9/17/01). 



Why They Hate Us 

As the media investigation focused on Osama bin Laden, news outlets 
still provided little information about what fuels his fanaticism. 
Instead of a serious inquiry into anti-U.S. sentiment in the Middle East 
and elsewhere, many commentators media offered little more than 
self-congratulatory rhetoric: 


"[The World Trade Center and the Pentagon] have drawn, like gathered 
lightning, the anger of the enemies of civilization. Those enemies are 
always out there.... Americans are slow to anger but mighty when angry, 
and their proper anger now should be alloyed with pride. They are 
targets because of their virtues--principally democracy, and loyalty to 
those nations which, like Israel, are embattled salients of our virtues 
in a still-dangerous world." 
--George Will (Washington Post, 9/12/01) 



"This nation symbolizes freedom, strength, tolerance, and democratic 
principles dedicated to both liberty and peace. To the tyrants, the 
despots, the closed societies, there are no alterations to the policies, 
no gestures we can make, no words we can say that will convince those 
determined to continue their hate." 
--Charles G. Boyd (Washington Post, 9/12/01) 



"Are Americans afraid to face the reality that there is a significant 
portion of this world's population that hates America, hates what 
freedom represents, hates the fact that we fight for freedom worldwide, 
hates our prosperity, hates our way of life? Have we been unwilling to 
face that very difficult reality?" 
--Sean Hannity (Fox News Channel, 9/13/01) 



"Our principled defense of individual freedom and our reluctance to 
intervene in the affairs of states harboring terrorists makes us an easy 
target." 
--Robert McFarlane (Washington Post, 9/13/01) 


One exception was ABC's Jim Wooten (World News Tonight, 9/12/01), who 
tried to shed some light on what might motivate some anti-U.S. sentiment 
in the Middle East, reporting that "Arabs see the U.S. as an accomplice 
of Israel, a partner in what they believe is the ruthless repression of 
Palestinian aspirations for land and independence." Wooten continued: 
"The most provocative issues: Israel's control over Islamic holy sites 
in Jerusalem; the stationing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia near some of 
Islam's holiest sites; and economic sanctions against Iraq, which have 
been seen to deprive children there of medicine and food." 

Stories like Wooten's, which examine the U.S.'s highly contentious role 
in the Middle East and illuminate some of the forces that can give rise 
to violent extremism, contribute far more to public security than do 
pundits calling for indiscriminate revenge.